The International Agency for Research on Cancer Monograph evaluation of certain insecticides and herbicides earns an F grade for failure to consider all the available studies, placing weight on weak and discredited studies (several in the advocacy community are already using this report claiming it is a vindication of the discredited Seralini GMO cancer claims), and most importantly failure to consider if glyphosate is a carcinogen at the doses to which consumers would normally be exposed.

It would require doses of hundreds or even thousands of times higher throughout a lifetime–a highly unlikely event–for even a single case of cancer to be caused by glyphosate. Many commonly encountered substances including coffee would fall into the same carcinogenic category if evaluated using the IARC flawed approach to this report. Experts around the globe have objected to IARCs reclassification of glyphosate.

The greater concern here is that it appears that IARC has been unduly influenced by anti-chemical activists who have persuaded it to take a politically popular hazard-based decision which is inconsistent with the weight of evidence and the underlying science. Agencies like IARC have an important role to play. It is shameful when that role is undermined by special interests for political objectives.

This article comes from the website unwave, a new Turner Corporation venture that proudly claims to provide “a distinctive opportunity for Turner to leverage our vast branding and content expertise to create business opportunities with advertisers and consumers in a high-growth, high-impact business segment.” In short, it’s slick deceptive internet advertising for the lucrative health and wellness industry, based on the unqualified, hopelessly unreliable writings of Jeffrey Smith ( see academicsreview.org/reviewed-content/genetic-roulette/ ) and the opinions of the “American Academy of Environmental Medicine.” This latter organisation is absent from the list of regular medical specialities provided at the American Board of Medical Specialies. www.abms.org/Who_We_Help/Physicians/specialties.aspx .

Images on the CNN website version of the article are accompanied by series of cleverly deceptive captions. For instance they mention some countries ban GM crops, but these are political decisions (in France as part of a deal to protect their energy industry). They did not involve a valid food safety argument.

Conclusion: Gossip and whispering about GMOs is not the basis of good health advice.

On April 7, 2014 a television “documentary” in Australia reported that a study of 10 nursing mother’s milk revealed the presence of glyphosate. This report referenced claims announced made by a “study” commissioned by anti-GMO activist group Moms Across America with “Sustainable Pulse,” an online “news service” published by anti-GMO campaigner and organic food entrepreneur Henry Rowlands. Here we provide the science and facts to consider.

Background:

Glyphosate is a relatively non-toxic broad-spectrum herbicide sold under the brand name Roundup that has been used for more than 40 years around homes, in landscapes and parks, and in agriculture. Glyphosate is far less toxic than alternative herbicides, has a broader spectrum of activity, and has fewer adverse effects on herbicide-tolerant transgenic plants than typical herbicides have on most crops. Since it is not persistent in the environment or groundwater and has low toxicity, glyphosate is generally considered to have less environmental impact than other herbicides.

An extensive scientific literature indicates that glyphosate is specifically not genotoxic, is not a carcinogen or a teratogen, nor has any specific adverse health effect ever been demonstrated to have been caused by exposure to or low-level consumption of glyphosate. It has little effect on non-target organisms other than plants; a contributing factor to this is that glyphosate inhibits an enzyme found in plants. This enzyme is not found in humans, other mammals, birds, fish, or insects.

The use of glyphosate on herbicide tolerant crops has proven problematic to anti-GMO activists since adoption of the technology promotes the switch to a chemical with a lower environmental impact quotient and lower toxicity. Recently, claims of adverse effects caused by glyphosate have begun to appear. Although none of the reports has proven credible, it appears that these reports are part of a deliberate campaign to create the False impression that glyphosate is highly toxic and harmful as a basis of calling for bans of glyphosate which in turn would obviate the use of most HT-crop plants.

Points to consider:

1. The results of these sample analyses were not claimed to be from a proper scientific study; in fact, the report concludes that the results warrant further studies to be done*. Even in the case of a well-designed and rigorously conducted scientific study, no conclusion is accepted without repetition and independent verification of the study. The media often runs with the conclusions of single studies, science is more conservative and demands conclusive evidence.

2. A number of factors undermine the strength of this report. The source of the samples tested and their history of exposure to glyphosate is unknown. It is not known if the assay method has been validated for human breast milk, since this is not often a tested material, a validation should have been reported.

3. The results reported are not consistent with US data on glyphosate in human subjects, and at face value raise a number of questions. Glyphosate is rapidly excreted primarily in the urine and there is no data to indicate that it accumulates in fluids such as breast milk or serum or in tissues. Glyphosate is often not detected in urine**, and when it is observed urine values are usually about 10-fold higher than serum values since it is efficiently excreted. Since glyphosate is not fat soluble, serum and breast milk values would be expected to be very similar which is not the case with the data reported for the 10 breast milk samples that were analyzed. Why breast milk samples would have an uncharacteristically and unexpectedly high content of glyphosate relative to serum and urine values is open to question but sample contamination and/or unreliability of assay are plausible explanations.

4. The finding that 3 or the 10 samples had “high” levels of glyphosate is misleading in two ways. Firstly, high in this case means measurable above the lower limit of detection rather than high meaning a cause for alarm. The highest of these 3 samples, if real, contained glyphosate at levels that represent a worst-case infant exposure (33 ug/kg/day) more than 50-fold below the ADI (Acceptable Daily Intake) set by US EPA regulatory toxicologists (1750 ug/kg). The ADI is set to provide a wide margin of safety of exposure.

5. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention note, “Just because we can detect levels of an environmental chemical in a person’s blood or urine does not necessarily mean that the chemical will cause effects or disease. Advances in analytical chemistry enable us to measure low levels of environmental chemicals in people, but separate studies of varying levels of exposure determine whether specific levels cause health effects.” Food naturally contains a wide-array of potentially toxic chemicals such as cyanide, strychnine, carototoxin, and arsenic but they are usually present at levels that do no harm. Any chemical, whether natural or human-made can hurt us if we consume too much of it. Even table salt or iron can kill if too much is consumed. The mere presence of glyphosate in serum, urine or mother’s milk is not a cause for alarm unless the levels are above those known to do harm. Over 4 decades of research studies and real-world use, including studies on large numbers of people who have been exposed to glyphosate, have allowed regulators to understand and set safe levels of exposure. Research has also established that the low levels of glyphosate sometimes found in bodily fluids pose no threat to health. WHO, EFSA, EPA and other regulatory agencies around the globe have concluded that trace levels of glyphosate in food should be of no more health concern than the presence of myriad potentially toxic chemicals that occur naturally in food.

6. It is important to consider the source. The testing was done for and samples were provided by Moms Across America and Sustainable Pulse; both organizations which oppose any use of GM technology in agriculture and which have a track record of promoting and endorsing flawed and rejected studies that claim harmful effects of GM crops while not citing the overwhelming number of studies that point to the safety of the technology. Their track record points to a clear bias on this issue. It is a bias that goes against the scientific literature and the great preponderance of expert opinion. It also runs counter to nearly 20 years of safe use by millions of farmers on billions of acres of farmed land.

* “The initial testing that has been completed at Microbe Inotech Labs, St. Louis, Missouri, is not meant to be a full scientific study. Instead it was set up to inspire and initiate full peer-reviewed scientific studies on glyphosate, by regulatory bodies and independent scientists worldwide.”

** Detection depends on the sensitivity of the assay system employed. As more and more sensitive assay techniques are developed, an increasing number of samples can be expected to test positive (see point #5).

US Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas) today introduced legislation that would recognize the federal government’s authority to determine if mandatory GMO labels should be applied to foods, to require FDA to review GMO-containing foods prior to marketing, and to define the word “natural” as applied to foods. Reuters carried a story on the proposed legislation written by Carey Gillam. Academics Review has assigned low grades in the past due to Ms. Gillam’s inaccurate reporting on GM foods which reflects a clear bias (academicsreview.org/2014/03/grading-the-science-usdas-economic-research-report-coverage-by-reuters/). In her April 9, 2014 report on the proposed legislation Ms. Gillam claimed “But there are also many scientific studies showing links to human and animal health problems, and many indicating environmental damage related to GMO crops.”

This statement is simply factually incorrect:

1. There are many scientific studies that show that GM crops are safe

2. There are a handful of discredited and flawed scientific studies that claim GM crops are not safe but these have been widely rejected by the scientific community

3. There is a broad scientific consensus, supported by 18 years of real-world experience by tens of millions of farmers who have planted billions of acres of GM crops, that GM technology presents no new or different risks and is as safe as, or is safer than other modalities of breeding. The vocal misrepresentation of fact by a few well funded hardcore dissidents by whom Ms. Gillam’s views are apparently informed do not change these facts.

4. Ms. Gillam also claims “Notably, millions of acres of U.S. farmland have developed weed resistance due to heavy use of crops that have been genetically altered to withstand dousings of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, and the subsequent heavy use of Roundup.” As is true with all herbicides, weeds with elevated resistance to glyphosate have emerged and have caused concern in 15-40% of planting locations, the challenge this presents to farmers can be controlled by better stewardship practices. The claim that crops are doused with Round-Up is emotionally loaded but equally inaccurate.

For these reasons Academics Review have to assign this report a grade of F.

One of the reasons the “controversy” over crops improved through biotechnology persists, is because it is manufactured and sustained by a well-organized, ongoing campaign, funded and sustained by vested interests. This astroturf campaign is fueled by credulous and disengaged journalists who recycle their press releases, and allow those biases to bleed over into other coverage.

We’ve written before about one repeat offender, Carey Gillam, of Reuters. She’s back with more of the same, in a story that ran on 9 April covering legislation introduced in Congress that would (redundantly) preempt state legislation to mandate labels that would mislead consumers and abet fraudulent marketing campaigns. Gillam writes “But some scientific studies warn of potential human and animal health problems, and GMO crops have been tied to environmental problems, including rising weed resistance. Millions of acres of U.S. farmland have developed weed resistance due to heavy use of crops that have been genetically altered to withstand dousings of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.”

Hold the weed/herbicide resistance issue for a moment, and let’s look at the “scientific studies that warn of potential human and animal health problems…” This claim is false, and flagrantly so. Gillam has been called on this before, yet she continues to recycle the falsehood. It bears repeating: there is not a single credible study showing any health or safety problem with any of the foods or animal feeds on the market derived from crops improved through biotechnology. Not one. FDA’s evaluation of each and every one can be found here. Gillam obviously cannot be bothered, but it makes for illuminating (if soporific) reading. Professional opponents of agricultural biotechnology, whose water Gillam reliably carries, argue that the FDA consultation process is “voluntary.” This, too, is a canard we’ve previously addressed, one which ignores that the same products have been subjected to equivalent, mandatory reviews in the EU, Japan, Australia, Canada, and other countries around the world. Gillam also ignores the recent reaffirmation from the FDA Commissioner that these foods are safe, and that FDA labels give consumers everything bit of scientifically defensible information about the safety and nutritional value of these foods.

The repeated citing of these false claims ignores the robust global consensus on the safety of crops improved through biotechnology, and recycles the canard that the science is undecided; that the published studiesdemonstrating the safety of these crops are counterbalanced by credible scientific publications suggesting otherwise. This is bogus, and after the last time Gillam ran it, we called her on it. That lead to an email exchange.

I challenged her to back up what she had written, and asked her to provide examples of the scientific papers she claims credibly support the notion that there are genuine safety issues here. . “I’d love to know what papers you think credibly support the claims you reported. Why not bring them on and let’s see what they are… But I could be wrong. If you have data, stand behind it. If not, I can provide you plenty of data on which a balanced journalist could base a correction.”

She responded “…The scientific literature showing a variety of health and environmental concerns surrounding the use of GMOs is out there. I have not just read the studies and made copies, but talked to scientists in several different countries about their concern.” Conspicuously absent from her response was any mention of just which studies these are. Perhaps because she knows she can’t cite any that haven’t been rejected by the scientific community or retracted by the journals in which they were published by mistake. Pressed further, instead of providing any examples of these mythical studies, she resorted to the shill gambit (hurling accusations that the views one disagrees with are bought and paid for, and thus do not have to be dealt with on their merits) thus conceding the argument.

As for biotech improved crops being “tied to environmental problems, including rising weed resistance. Millions of acres of U.S. farmland have developed weed resistance due to heavy use of crops that have been genetically altered to withstand dousings of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide…” there are several points to be made.

The first is that the evolution of resistance/tolerance is completely unsurprising. In fact, “The First Journal Article on Insecticide Resistance was Published 100 Years Ago this Month”. Gillam may be shocked to discover gambling in the casino, but it’s been known for some time. And experts in weed management have known about glyphosate tolerant weeds for some time as well, and they don’t fit comfortably into activist story line Gillam dutifully parrots. Never mind that farmers don’t “douse” weeds with glyphosate, or anything (why not? It costs money, and dousing is unnecessary, wasteful and expensive.) The bottom line is that the resistance issues are most severe in the fields of farmers who failed to follow the recommended and established best practices, and went instead year on year using only one method of weed control, eschewing the rotation and alternation of crops and weed control methods called for by long experience. The result is neither a new problem, nor one that cannot be managed. As any chef can tell you, the kitchen knife needs sharpening from time to time, and every so often one must buy a new one.

Others have noted Gillam’s repeated offenses in this area. Sadly, it seems nothing will change until something changes. Perhaps it’s time for her editors to move her to a beat that would give her less opportunity to exercise the prejudices she is obviously unwilling to check.

Why Consumers Pay More for Organic Foods? Fear Sells and Marketers Know it.An academic review of more than 25 years of market research, marketing tactics and government programs driving sales in the organic and natural product industries

(April 8, 2014 Priest River, ID) An extensive review of more than 200 published academic, industry and government research reports into why consumers adopt organic product purchasing behaviors was conducted by Academics Review – a non-profit led by independent academic experts in agriculture and food sciences. This review was then supplemented with an assessment of more than 1,000 news reports, 500 website and social media account evaluations and reviews of hundreds of other marketing materials, advertisements, analyst presentations, speeches and advocacy reports generated between 1988 and 2014. Our findings were reviewed and endorsed by an international panel of independent agricultural science, food science, economic and legal experts from respected international institutions with extensive experience in academic food and agriculture research and publishing.

Our report finds consumers have spent hundreds of billion dollars purchasing premium-priced organic food products based on false or misleading perceptions about comparative product food safety, nutrition and health attributes. The research found extensive evidence that widespread, collaborative and pervasive industry marketing activities are a primary cause for these misperceptions. This suggests a widespread organic and natural products industry pattern of research-informed and intentionally-deceptive marketing and paid advocacy. Further, this deceptive marketing is enabled and conducted with the implied use and approval of the U.S. government endorsed and managed U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Organic Seal and corresponding National Organic Standards Program (NOSP) in direct conflict with the USDA’s NOSP stated intent and purpose.

“It is our hope that responsible members of the organic food industry and government officials will use these findings to address consumer misperceptions about important issues of food safety and nutrition,” said Professor Bruce Chassy, professor emeritus University of Illinois, Department of Food Science & Human Nutrition. “Accurate food safety, nutrition and health information combined with consumer pocket book protections should be a threshold standard for any U.S. government program that cannot be coopted by special interest marketing groups.”

Note: Academics Review does not solicit or accept funds from any source for specific research or any other activities associated with any products or services. Academics Review has no conflicts-of-interest associated with this publication, and all associated costs for which were paid for using our general funds without any specific donor’ influence or direction. Academics Review is an independent IRS registered 501c3 non-profit organization which only accepts unrestricted donations in support of our work.

Julie Taylor earns a D- for her CNN Health article published via upwave – “Turner Broadcasting’s new lifestyle brand designed to entertain the health into you!” Taylor writes, “There is no consensus in the scientific community that GMOs are safe, says David Schubert at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies…”

To read Taylor’s article which opens, “It seems like everyone is talking about the dangers of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) these days….” click here.

This article comes from the website unwave, a new Turner Corporation venture that proudly claims to provide “a distinctive opportunity for Turner to leverage our vast branding and content expertise to create business opportunities with advertisers and consumers in a high-growth, high-impact business segment”. In short, it’s slick deceptive internet advertising for the lucrative health and wellness industry, based on the unqualified, hopelessly unreliable writings of Jeffrey Smith and the opinions of the “American Academy of Environmental Medicine”. This latter organisation is absent from the list of regular medical specialties provided at the American Board of Medical Specialties.

Images on the CNN website version of the article are accompanied by series of cleverly deceptive captions. For instance they mention some countries ban GM crops, but these are political decisions (in France as part of a deal to protect their energy industry). They did not involve a valid food safety argument.

Conclusion: Gossip and whispering about GMOs is not the basis of good health advice.

To read more about the overwhelming scientific, medical and regulatory consensus on the safety of GMO crops check out these links:

Titled “A Valuable Reputation,” it purports to tell the story of Berkeley researcher Dr. Tyrone Hayes and how, after he supposedly revealed the harmful effects of a popular herbicide on frog development, the chemical’s maker attempted to discredit him. In subsequent statements by the author and other articles, this has morphed into allegations of a full-fledged corporate conspiracy one typically finds only in John Grisham novels, and Hayes’s paranoia (to use the New Yorker’s own term) and wild allegations have taken on the air of known “facts.”

Beyond the sensationalism and distortions, however, lies a deeper agenda, which the New Yorker and its author seem now to be explicitly endorsing. At its core it is fundamentally anti-science. Wrapped up in a supposed concern for the environment and safety, it seeks to overturn the basic principles of how science is conducted and how regulatory decisions are made.

I have written before about Tyrone Hayes, his obsessive vendetta against Syngenta (the maker of atrazine, the herbicide in question), his propensity for keeping his data secret, and how he sent hundreds of taunting, sexually abusive and threatening emails to Syngenta’s female employees and others – despite warnings from the Berkeley administration to desist.

New Yorker author Rachel Aviv hardly acknowledges this 10-year long campaign of harassment, bringing it up in the article only to have it dismissed by a Hayes’s friend at U.C. Berkeley as “quite hilarious” (one wonders if sexual harassment is now considered “hilarious” at Berkeley as long the female victims happen to work for a “big corporation”). Instead, Aviv weaves an extraordinary story out of Tyrone Hayes’ tales of phone tapping, stalking and intimidation – for which Hayes provides not a shred of evidence and all of which the company patently denies.

In order to bolster Hayes’ credibility, however, Aviv apparently felt she had to omit some of Hayes’s nastier allegations – claims so outlandish that they certainly would have undermined his credibility with all but the most gullible of readers. As Hayes makes these accusations in virtually every one of his public presentations, media interviews and anti-pesticide activist protest events, Aviv must have been aware of them. For instance:

Hayes claims Syngenta and the drug company Novartis are engaged in a ghoulish conspiracy to create cancer with Syngenta’s herbicide in order to reap profits by selling Novartis’s oncology drugs to the victims. But aside from the absurdity of the theory (and the fact that the science is clear that the herbicide does not cause cancer), Novartis does not own Syngenta as Hayes’s falsely and ignorantly asserts. The two are completely separate companies – connected only by the fact that they were both created by the mergers followed by spin offs of two larger agribusiness and pharmaceutical companies more than a dozen years ago.

When Hayes’s obscene emails became public as part of an ethics complaint to Berkeley in 2012, Hayes upped the ante with increasingly bizarre accusations of persecution by Syngenta. He has several times repeated the claim – most recently on a nationally syndicated radio and television show “Democracy Now!” — that a well-respected scientist who works for the company stalks him and “whispers” in his ear at public events. On one or more occasions, says Hayes, this scientist threatened to have him lynched and to send “good old boys” to rape him, his wife and his daughter. Of course, Hayes has not one shred of evidence to back up this slander. I personally know the scientist about whom Hayes makes these repugnant allegations and it is beyond my and any other reasonable person’s belief that he would make such threats. However, it is not beyond the belief of those who know Hayes that he would fabricate such claims to serve his own agenda.

Hayes’ claims that last year Syngenta pressured his employer, the University of California at Berkeley, to cut funding for his lab and that Berkeley complied in order to protect a grant made by Novartis in the late 1990s. Hayes’s lab funding were not cut by Berkeley. Rather they ran run out (spent by Hayes), and it had nothing to do with Syngenta, or the Novartis grant, which had run out over ten years earlier. When Hayes’s allegations first surfaced in a credulous piece of reporting by the Chronicle of Higher Education, the University was uncharacteristically forthright in its denials. The article, wrote Berkeley’s vice chancellor for research, “supported a wholly false narrative by conveying without comment—and with no corroboration or supporting facts—the professor’s belief that we were motivated by a desire to protect a research grant with Novartis… There is just one problem: The university’s contract with Novartis expired 10 years ago and was not renewed, and we have no institutional relationship with Syngenta…” Hayes’ vice chancellor closed his letter noting, “We are utterly perplexed by his allegations that there exists some sort of conspiracy directed at him.”[1]

Egregious as these omissions by the New Yorker are, the most disturbing aspect is the agenda that apparently lies behind the story, which author Aviv plainly revealed in a subsequent NPR interview. The problem with the US regulatory process, according to Aviv, is that corporations have been conducting what she disparagingly calls a “sound science campaign.” At the heart of this campaign is the “Data Quality Act,” passed in 2000, requiring that regulations rely on studies that meet high standards for “quality, objectivity, utility and integrity.” According to Aviv, this is all part of a nefarious conspiracy on the part of industry to “delay regulation by kind of picking apart the science that would be used to support the regulation.”[2]

Aviv and Hayes would have us think government regulators at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are all in the pocket of big business and cannot be trusted. This of course flies in the face of facts and history showing these regulators to be fiercely independent from and often hypercritical and highly demanding of industry groups. This denigration of government regulators as industry pawns, like Hayes’ other claims, is not based in fact or reality.

Of course, what Aviv would call “picking apart the science,” academics and researchers call the scientific method. “Picking apart” studies to see if they are replicable is how science is supposed to work. If science isn’t falsifiable, it is simply opinion or speculation. The New Yorker’s dismissal of this basic principle is especially ironic in the context of recent, shocking revelations about the vast amount of junk science published today that simply can’t be reproduced.

But probably no group of pesticide studies has been as thoroughly falsified as those of Tyrone Hayes. The EPA has gone on record calling his work “methodologically flawed” and has twice publicly stated that Hayes has never made his full data accessible to them (in direct contradiction of Hayes’s own claims). Hayes’ sensationalized claims of frogs that are “chemically castrated” and turned “gay” by atrazine have simply not been replicated by other scientists and his assertions are contradicted by a vast number of studies in the scientific literature. Moreover, although atrazine has been used for over 50 years, field studies have failed to find any correlation with feminized male frogs that Hayes claims occurred in his research.

Perhaps this is because, in contrast to Hayes’s secret science, the massive, state-of-the-art studies conducted by Germany’s Werner Kloas – actually two identical studies conducted in separate labs, so they were replicated in real time, failed to establish the effects claimed by Hayes. These studies, which EPA considers definitive, show no harmful effects on frogs[3] at an even wider range of doses than Hayes claims he tested. EPA participated in the studies’ design, had full access to the labs, and audited and vetted every single data point in them. But because Syngenta was obliged by US law to pay for the studies (even though companies play no role in government’s final interpretation of these required studies) Aviv dismisses them out of hand as “industry funded.”

(In fact, the largest and most recent studies to raise legitimate amphibian health concerns do not report causal links to agricultural practices, as most amphibian health problems occur in urban and suburban settings. Still non-science journalists like Aviv conflate and confuse this legitimate research as somehow corroborative of Hayes’ claims.)

Syngenta may have good reason to feel it was treated unfairly, even dishonestly, in the New Yorker article. The real damage, however, is that such shoddy journalism debases the public’s understanding of how science should be conducted and the importance of non-politicized, sound science-based regulatory systems to protect consumers.

Meanwhile, her so-called victim, Tyrone Hayes, is now billed as a “celebrity” speaker and is pulling down $10,000 a speech to spin his fantasies. He promotes himself as a paid litigation consultant working for attorneys seeking big settlements from pesticide-makers. And, Hayes’ “research” is now securely funded by science-distorting anti-pesticide activist groups. Those of us who care about academic integrity and validated science, however, should continue to insist on “sound science,” no matter how much the New Yorker objects.

[3] ”When the EPA applied the test design elements retroactively to the 75 amphibian studies in the published literature (36 studies reviewed and presented to the SAP in 2007 and 39 new studies published since the 2007 SAP), only one study on one species was left that met all of the test design elements, the DCI study (Kloas et al. 2009 1)… only the DCI study (Kloas et al. 2009) met all of the EPA’s test design criteria… (Kloas et al. 2009) showed that there were no gonadal effects observed in the strain of X. laevis tested at atrazine concentrations 0.01 to 100 µg/L. This one “no effect” X. laevis study was used by the EPA to conclude that atrazine has no effect on all amphibians at concentrations less than 100 µg/L…” (link p. 14)

This detailed report analyzes the impacts of planting GE crops in the US over the past 15 years. The ERS authors present a robust data set illustrated in excellent graphs and tables and organized in a logical topical order that document economic, agricultural and environmental benefits. The discussion of concerns about GE crops often lacks context and over-simplifies issues which should have been discussed with additional nuance and depth. A few points were deducted for repeating allegations without affording them proper analysis.

This report on the recent publication by the ERS-USDA “Genetically Engineered Crops in the United States” fails to cover a number of important points and distorts the findings of ERS researchers. While the bulk of the ERS report provides voluminous well-analyzed data on the positive economic, agricultural, and environmental outcomes of the rapid and widespread introduction of GE crops in the US, the Reuters report portrays the report more as a discussion about potentially harmful outcomes.

Follow this space for more Academics Review constructive reviews of science-related content as our collaborative of independent academic peers reviews reporting by various sources for scientific accuracy.

Academics Review is dedicated to providing unbiased expert reviews of publications making scientific claims. While we have focused our in-depth reviews on debunking flawed and psuedo-scientific papers we have come to realize that there is also a need to highlight outstanding reports that make an important contribution as well. Further, we intend to increase our more frequent and top line reviews of the way science gets reported in the media to provide constructive academic assessments that we hope will result in improved scientific accuracy in the presentation of related information to the public.

A LARGE body of literature has shown that genetically modified (GM) plants that produce proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) to protect themselves from insect pests have little to no effect on a wide range of non-target insects. However, concerns about Bt crops still exist.

Now, two new studies using more exacting methods found that Bt crops have no negative effects on two beneficial insect predators or on a beneficial entomopathogenic nematode.

In an article in the February issue of Environmental Entomology, researchers used caterpillars that were known to be resistant to Bt proteins and fed them Bt maize and Bt cotton…

Tufts University has always been and remains deeply committed to the highest ethical and scientific standards in research. When questions were raised about whether a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition adhered to requirements for human subjects research, the Tufts Institutional Review Board (IRB) and Tufts University launched both internal and external reviews of the study activities. The University also conducted a scientific review to determine whether the journal manuscript accurately reported the study research methods, measurements and findings. In undertaking these reviews, the IRB members and the external reviewers examined the study documentation and interviewed a number of research team members.

These multiple reviews found no concerns related to the integrity of the study data, the accuracy of the research results or the safety of the research subjects. In fact, the study indicated that a single serving of the test product, Golden Rice, could provide greater than 50 percent of the recommended daily intake of vitamin A in these children, which could significantly improve health outcomes if adopted as a dietary regimen.

While the study data were validated and no health or safety concerns were identified, the research itself was found not to have been conducted in full compliance with IRB policy or federal regulations. Reviews found insufficient evidence of appropriate reviews and approvals in China. They also identified concerns with the informed consent process, including inadequate explanation of the genetically-modified nature of Golden Rice. The principal investigator also did not obtain IRB approval for some changes to study procedures before implementing the changes.

Tufts has taken substantive corrective and preventive actions to address these findings. The principal investigator is unable to conduct human subjects research for two years, during which time she will be retrained on human subjects research regulations and policies. For the two years following, she will be eligible to conduct human subjects research as a co-investigator under the direct supervision of a principal investigator. The IRB has also revised its policies and procedures to ensure that in the future, research conducted outside the United States and/or in cultural contexts with which the IRB is not adequately familiar is reviewed more carefully. We have notified all relevant agencies in the United States and China of our findings, and the principal investigator has also notified the publishing journal.

We regret that deviations from certain approved protocols and standards occurred. Tufts has strengthened our policies and procedures to prevent recurrence of such problems, and we remain committed to conducting research of the highest quality, with rigorous oversight.